Feminist Perspectives in Marketing: Past, Present and Future Pauline Maclaran and Olga Kravets (in Routledge Companion to Critical Marketing) Feminist perspectives expose many gendered ideologies embedded in marketing and consumption phenomena, as well as the unequal power relations that underpin them. Initially critiques came from outside the marketing and consumer research disciplines, led by second wave feminists in the 1960s and 70s. Activists such as Friedan (1963) saw marketers as being complicit in a patriarchal system that sought to manipulate and control women through domesticity. They targeted advertising in particular where negative female stereotypes abounded, stereotypes that served to reinforce passive, decorative models of femininity. Despite such critiques, it was not until the 1990s and following the “cultural turn” that scholars within the marketing discipline began to draw on feminist perspectives. This work deconstructed advertising meanings (Stern, 1992, 1993) and the underpinning masculinist ideologies of both marketing (Bristor and Fischer, 1993) and consumer research (Hirschman, 1999; Joy and Venkatesh, 1994). It also introduced innovative theoretical perspectives such as ecofeminism that threw light on the feminine bias in caring for the environment and the androcentric rationale separating humans from nature and guiding marketing activities (Dobscha, 1993). Since this period feminist voices have waxed and waned in marketing and consumer research scholarship, reflecting also the trajectory of feminism and the (so-called) postfeminist era. After giving a brief overview of feminism’s main principles and major types, this chapter chronicles the historical intertwining of feminism with marketing and gives an overview of the contributions feminist scholarship has made to critical marketing. In order to do this we look at what are now often referred to as the four waves of feminism and analyse the different relationship each time period has had with marketing and the scholarship therein.1 We also highlight key theoretical perspectives within the feminist canon that have driven this work, before detailing key areas where we believe future critique is urgently required. What is Feminism? Many misconceptions of what constitutes a feminist still endure and, sadly, the two authors frequently hear young female students using the well-worn expression “I’m not a feminist but…” This denial is usually based on ill-founded assumptions such as the belief that feminists hate men or consider women to be superior to men. We believe, therefore, it is important to set out some of the basic principles of feminism to put the record straight for new readers to the topic. Part of the problem in understanding feminism is that it is not just one unified body of thought and there are many different varieties, each with their own emphasis (see Table 1 below for examples of various types of feminism, although this is by no means an exhaustive list). Broadly speaking, however, a key principle that underpins feminist approaches and theorising is that men and women should be equal and that currently there is an unequal relationship, although this inequality varies greatly depending on a multitude 1 Although we find the ‘wave’ metaphor useful for this analysis – especially in connecting early suffragette activism with that in the 1960s - we also acknowledge that it risks being reductionist in simplifying historical complexities and obscuring other feminist activism/scholarship that does not fall neatly into these periods or that may risk being mis-categorised. 1 of different global contexts. Another unifying principle is that this inequality is made possible by patriarchy, a system that ensures all major social institutions – economic, political, the family and religion – are male-dominated. Thus feminist theory helps us understand how the workings of patriarchy permeate all aspects of our lives, being deeply embedded in wider socio-cultural and economic structures. Feminist thought also makes a key distinction between sex and gender: sex is the biological category one is assigned at birth (man/women), whereas gender is socially constructed with gender norms (masculine/feminine characteristics) varying across different cultures and time periods. INSERT TABLE 1 HERE The Origins of Feminism: The First Wave (1840-1920) Women’s oppression has a long history, with women’s inferiority to men being heavily encoded in many ancient texts, particularly those conveying philosophical and religious doctrine. The Ancient Greeks were no exception and Aristotle (born in 384 B.C.) is accredited with saying that “the courage of a man lies in commanding, a woman’s lies in obeying….a female is an incomplete male or ‘as it were, a deformity’ (Freeland, 1994: 145-46). Given this longstanding misogyny, it is scarcely surprising that there have been dissenting female voices over the centuries although most have been silenced due to the prevalent power imbalances and women’s exclusion from the public sphere. For example, one of the first documented critiques of gender ideology is Rachel Speght (born 1597), a poet and polemicist who published a women's rights pamphlet in English under her own name. French playwright, Olympe de Gouges (1748 – 1793) wrote another influential text, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Citizen (1791). And, of course, Mary Wollstonecraft's (1759 – 1797) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the most important documents in the history of women’s rights. It was not until the early suffragette movement originating in the 1850s, however, that some change to the status of women in Western society began to happen. This movement comprises the first wave of feminism. The suffragettes viewed marketing favourably and used various marketing techniques to promote their activities and gain publicity for the movement (Scott, 2005). Elizabeth Caddy famously endorsed Fairy Soap; and the notion of women’s empowerment was encoded into the fashion for bloomers (so named after suffragette, Amelia Bloomer who started the trend). Wearing bloomers to ride bicycles, suffragettes thereby signalled their independence and right to equal citizenship with men (Finnegan, 1999). A burgeoning number of department stores provided safe havens where women could meet, unescorted by a man and thus afforded new opportunities for suffragettes to get together and plan their activities. Gordon Selfridge and John Wanamaker were known to be keen supporters of the movement (Tadajewski, 2013; Maclaran, 2012), and Selfridges store even flew the suffragette flag from its rooftop. Such stores also provided many new career opportunities for women and were seen as “women’s worlds” (Bowlby, 1985). During this first wave, marketing as a discipline was also in its inception, just beginning to break away from economics and establish itself in its own right. The first 2 marketing courses commenced around the early 1900s and the history of marketing thought has widely documented the contributions of various scholars such as Wroe Anderson, Paul Converse, Robert Bartels as well as many other male voices from both academia and practice. Female voices are conspicuously absent so does this mean there were no female contributors? Our answer to this question is a resounding ‘no’: there are many female voices that have been ignored. Just as feminist literary criticism and philosophy scholars have already argued that patriarchy has constructed the literary and philosophical canons, we argue that so too has patriarchy constructed the marketing canon. This means that within marketing scholarship women’s voices have been suppressed or silenced because they were not seen as sufficiently significant, while those generally held up as role models have been men. The goal of much feminist scholarship is to uncover and highlight works by neglected female authors. To this end a special issue of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing highlights the important contributions to marketing thought and practice made by Home Economists and women who were key players in the advertising industry (Tadajewski and Maclaran, 2013). The volume shows how Home Economists such as Helen Woodward, Hazel Kyrk, Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt and Martha Van Rensselaer pioneered much early work in the understanding of consumption behaviours (Parsons, 2013; Tadajewski, 2013; Zuckerman, 2013). For example, Tadjewski (2013) highlights the conceptual and theoretical sophistication of seminal texts by Helen Woodward and Hazel Kyrk, both prolific writers on marketing and consumption phenomena. The same issue also documents the contributions of women women in advertising, such as Helen Landsdowne Resor who worked for J. Walter Thompson’s Women’s Editorial Department in the early twentieth century (Scanlon, 2013), as well as documenting the barriers on account of gender and race that had to be overcome. Foster Davis (2013) details the remarkable achievements of Caroline Robinson Jones, the first black woman to be vice-president of a major advertising agency. Apart from this special issue and other work by Zuckerman and Carsky (1990), there is little documentation of female contributions to marketing theory or practice and there remains much to be done to emphasise women’s contributions to marketing in this early period. Second Wave Feminism (1960-1988) This era marked a much greater suspicion of marketers and marketing activities as being complicit in the oppression of women, particularly through stereotypical